I'm Sri Lankan and a proprietary trader at a bulge-bracket Wall Street firm, this is my story.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Holiday Observations - Part 2

As you may have realised by now, one of my greatest foibles is the insatiable desire for books. Led by one of these urges, I walked into my neighbourhood book store this afternoon, and paused. It looked like a gathering of the Stepford Wives. I was the only man in the whole place. Now I knew what office aunties did after a long day of doing fuck all.

It turns out that professional women love to read, read crap, but read nevertheless. Suddenly, the success (and for fuck's sake, sequels) of "The true stories of a London Call Girl" made a whole lot of sense. Publishers have realised that the only people who still read by holding ink and pulp for hours are women, and have instructed their minions (writers) to produce books accordingly. In addition to the incessant drivel pumped out by romance/susepense/soft-porn/travel/cookery/"hot guy autobiography"/"brave/abused woman autobiography" writers, serious literature is also adjusting to the changing demographics of its readership. Rushdie's newest book is about love, not Shaitan falling from the sky into a British Pastoral. A woman, a bloody feminist at that, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and she had the balls (sic) to refuse.

I'm not Talib, and welcome the development of a race of women who actually know more about the world than the latest on Britney's tit flashings but I mourn for my fellow brothers. Please start reading, before we have to start those fucking gay book clubs.